The American Police State | Posted on Oct 29, 2007 | By Chris Hedges

A Dallas jury, a week ago, caused a mistrial in the government case against this country’s largest Islamic charity. The action raises a defiant fist on the sinking ship of American democracy.
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... The jury may have rejected the federal government’s claim that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development funneled millions of dollars to Middle Eastern terrorists. It may have acquitted Mohammad el-Mezain, the former chairman of the foundation, of virtually all criminal charges related to funding terrorism (the jury deadlocked on one of the 32 charges against el-Mezain), and it may have deadlocked on the charges that had been lodged against four other former leaders of the charity, but don’t be fooled. This mistrial will do nothing to impede the administration’s ongoing contempt for the rule of law. It will do nothing to stop the curtailment of our civil liberties and rights. The grim march toward a police state continues.
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The Bush administration, which froze the foundation’s finances three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and indicted its officials three years later on charges that they provided funds for the militant group Hamas, has ensured that the foundation and all other Palestinian charities will never reopen in the United States. Any organized support for Palestinians from within the U.S. has been rendered impossible. The goal of the Israeli government and the Bush administration—despite the charade of peace negotiations to be held at Annapolis—is to grind defiant Palestinians into the dirt. Israel, which has plunged the Gaza Strip into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, has now begun to ban fuel supplies and sever electrical service. The severe deprivation, the Israelis hope, will see the overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza and the reinstatement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has become the Marshal Pétain of the Palestinian people.
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The Bush administration shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development six years ago and froze its assets. There was no hearing or trial. It became a crime for anyone to engage in transactions with the foundation. The administration never produced evidence to support the charges. It did not have any. In the “war on terror,” evidence is unnecessary. An executive order is enough. The foundation sued the government in a federal court in the District of Columbia. Behind closed doors, the government presented secret evidence that the charity had no opportunity to see or rebut. The charity’s case was dismissed.

The government has closed seven Muslim charities in the United States and frozen their assets. Not one of them, or any person associated with them, has been found guilty of financing terrorism. They will remain shut. George W. Bush can tar any organization or individual, here or abroad, as being part of a terrorist conspiracy and by fiat render them powerless. He does not need to make formal charges. He does not need to wait for a trial verdict. Secret evidence, which these court cases have exposed as a sham, is enough. The juries in Tampa, Chicago and Dallas did their duty. They spoke for the rights of citizens. They spoke for the protection of due process and the rule of law. They threw small hurdles in front of the emergent police state. ...
- posted by Editor @ 2:33 PM

Campuses Have Become Poisoned by an Atmosphere of Surveillance and Harassment | By Saree Makdisi | Oct 20, 2007, 22:32

Academic Freedom is at Risk in America

"Academic colleagues, get used to it," warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. "Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you've also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night."

Kramer's warning inaugurated an attack on intellectual freedom in the U.S. that has grown more aggressive in recent months.

This attack, intended to shield Israel from criticism, not only threatens academic privileges on college campuses, it jeopardizes our capacity to evaluate our foreign policy. With a potentially catastrophic clash with Iran on the horizon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spiraling out of control, Americans urgently need to be able to think clearly about our commitments and intentions in the Middle East. And yet we are being prevented from doing so by a longstanding campaign of intimidation that has terminated careers, stymied debate and shut down dialogue.

Over the past few years, Israel's U.S. defenders have stepped up their campaign by establishing a network of institutions (such as Campus Watch, Stand With Us, the David Project, the Israel on Campus Coalition, and the disingenuously named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East) dedicated to the task of monitoring our campuses and bringing pressure to bear on those critical of Israeli policies. By orchestrating letter-writing and petitioning campaigns, falsely raising fears of anti-Semitism, mobilizing often grossly distorted media coverage and recruiting local and national politicians to their cause, they have severely disrupted academic processes, the free function of which once made American universities the envy of the world.

Outside interference by Israel's supporters has plunged one U.S. campus after another into crisis. They have introduced crudely political -- rather than strictly academic or scholarly -- criteria into hiring, promotion and other decisions at a number of universities, including Columbia, Yale, Wayne State, Barnard and DePaul, which recently denied tenure to the Jewish American scholar Norman Finkelstein following an especially ugly campaign spearheaded by Alan Dershowitz, one of Israel's most ardent American defenders.
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That Israel's American supporters so often resort to angry outbursts rather than principled arguments -- and seem to find emotional blackmail more effective than genuine debate -- is ultimately a sign of their weakness rather than their strength. For all the damage it can do in the short term, in the long run such a position is untenable, too dependent on emotion and cliché rather than hard facts. The phenomenal success of Carter's book suggests that more and more Americans are learning to ignore the scare tactics that are the only tools available to Israel's supporters. ...
- posted by Editor @ 6:58 PM

October 16, 2007, 5:53 pm | Principal of Arabic School Says She Was Forced Out | By Jennifer Medina

Updated, 6:48 p.m. | Debbie Almontaser, who resigned under fire from her position as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, the city’s Arabic-themed school, spoke out publicly for the first time today since her case attracted headlines and protests from opposing sides. Ms. Almontaser, a Yemeni-American with an extensive record of educational and community work in Brooklyn, stepped down on Aug. 10 amid a controversy that erupted after she was quoted defending the use of the word “intifada” as a T-shirt slogan.
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In early August of this year, under pressure from The New York Post, The New York Sun, and right-wing bloggers, representatives of the mayor, the chancellor, and New Visions demanded that I resign as KGIA’s principal. They threatened to close down KGIA if I refused. The next day, I submitted my letter of resignation. Because I believe that I am the person to carry forward the mission of KGIA, I have today submitted my application to become the principal of KGIA. I have also asked my lawyer to begin preparing a lawsuit against the D.O.E. for violation of my constitutional rights.
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On Feb. 12, 2007, the Department of Education announced the establishment of KGIA. In the days following, right-wing blogs began spinning KGIA as an Islamist school with a radical extremist jihad principal. And local New York City papers fanned the flames with headlines like: “Holy war! Slope Parents Protest Arabic School Plan,” “A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn,” and “Arabic School Idea Is a Monstrosity.” From the day the school was approved to the day I was forced to resign, The New York Sun plastered my picture on its website with a link to negative articles about KGIA.

Leading the attack was the “Stop the Madrassa Coalition” run by Daniel Pipes, who has made his career fostering hatred of Arabs and Muslims. ... To stir up anti-Arab prejudice, they constantly referred to me by my Arabic name, a name that I do not use professionally. They even created and circulated a YouTube clip depicting me as a radical Islamist.
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... Because the T-shirts had nothing to do with me or KGIA, I saw no reason to discuss the issue with the media. I agreed to an interview with a reporter from The Post at the D.O.E.’s insistence. During the interview, the reporter asked about the Arabic origin of the word “intifada.” I told him that the root word from which the word intifada originates means “shake off” and that the word intifada has different meanings for different people, but certainly for many, given its association with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it implied violence. I reiterated that I would never affiliate myself with an individual or organization that would condone violence ...
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... While I have been the victim of a serious injustice, the far larger offense has been to the Arab and Muslim communities of New York City. In the years since 9/11, our communities have been the object of the most vile and hateful attacks. The attacks on me are part of a larger campaign to intimidate and silence marginalized communities. Among other strategies, the right-wing is trying to get people from other communities to view Arabs and Muslims as threats to their safety and security. As a result, well-meaning people sometimes act out of fear—not just a knee-jerk anti-Arab, anti-Muslim response, but the fear that, if they do not succumb to right-wing pressure, they too will become targets.
- posted by Editor @ 8:21 PM

Business abandons GOP for Democrats | By: Jeanne Cummings | Oct 15, 2007 06:25 PM EST

Lag, lag, lag. That’s all you hear these days regarding Republican fundraising compared with the Democrats’.
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All 10 of the top-giving industries tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan money and politics watchdog group, are now donating more cash to Democrats than Republicans. A year ago, Republicans had the edge in six of the 10 sectors.
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Republican leaders threatened a freeze-out of business lobbyists who dared hire a Democrat or ignored the names on the leadership’s private hiring tip sheet.

Pay-to-play became the insider mantra during the Republican reign. But “extortion” was how many CEOs described the annual shakedowns by committee chairmen with jurisdiction over their industries.
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Sure, President Bush’s big tax cuts and easing of regulatory oversight were roundly applauded. But then there was the Sarbanes-Oxley law, a cumbersome set of new rules imposed on corporations after a spate of their own scandals.
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As businesses begged for help on health care costs, Republicans staked out policy positions aimed more at defining partisan wedges than practical solutions.
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Corporate chieftains disciplined in monitoring the bottom line witnessed Republican committee chairmen spending like divas on new government programs and earmarks.

Scandals and hypocrisy gave a tawdry air to the relationships, prompting some brand-conscious lobbyists to recoil from their political brethren.
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Exhibit A: Leading Republicans argue a key way to solve the nation’s illegal immigration problem is to make business owners face prison time unless they can verify their employees are legal.

Just last week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined with the ACLU to win a court order preventing the Bush administration from implementing a program that would subject farmers, landscapers, hoteliers and builders to fines and prison sentences if they can’t or won’t affirm the legal status of their employees.

The business community objected to the plan, arguing it could lead to discrimination and the denial of jobs to native-born U.S. workers. ...
- posted by Editor @ 5:25 PM

"Ron Paul was rejected because of his consistent voting record against U.S. assistance to Israel and his criticism of the pro-Israel lobby."

Source: JTA via The Jewish Federation of St. Louis
URL Source: http://stlouis.ujcfedweb.org/page.html?ArticleID=159565
Published: Oct 15, 2007
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WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Each of the leading GOP presidential candidates to some degree has run away from the Bush legacy. But this week they will be making their case before one of the president's most loyal constituencies: Republican Jews.

The Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday is hosting a forum in Washington for presidential hopefuls. Six of the party's nine candidates were invited, and five will attend: former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, and current U.S. Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Sam Brownback of Kansas.
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Not invited were long-shots U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter of California, Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Ron Paul of Texas. Paul was rejected because of his consistent voting record against U.S. assistance to Israel and his criticism of the pro-Israel lobby.
- posted by Editor @ 5:20 PM

Jewish Groups Secure Major Funding From Department Of Homeland Security | Beth Young,
JTA Wire Service | OCTOBER 09, 2007 | Washington

Jewish institutions will receive the majority of U.S. federal funds designated this year to help secure non-profit organizations. Of the 308 grants awarded through the Urban Areas Security Initiative Non-Profit Security Grant Program, 251 are being allocated to Jewish groups totaling $19.6 million.

The $24 million in total grants announced by the Department of Homeland Security last week vary in amounts, with $100,000 the maximum. The funds are used to provide everything from roadblocks to security cameras to blast-proof doors and windows at locations that could be terrorist targets.

The grants were announced a few days after representatives of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives toured the Jewish community's national security alert organization in Manhattan.
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"Anywhere where Jews gather is a potential target," he told JTA. "I think synagogues are particularly susceptible because they’re considered soft targets, but my concern is the lone wolf, the most difficult to investigate. The only real mitigation we have is to make the community aware of these types of individuals and train them about what to look out for." ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:49 PM

Why Dems and Republicans Bow to the Israel Lobby | By John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

10/09/07 "New York Times" -- - The following is an excerpt from the Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).
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Yet on one subject, we can be equally confident that the candidates will speak with one voice. In 2008, as in previous election years, serious candidates for the highest office in the land will go to considerable lengths to express their deep personal commitment to one foreign country -- Israel -- as well as their determination to maintain unyielding U.S. support for the Jewish state. Each candidate will emphasize that he or she fully appreciates the multitude of threats facing Israel and make it clear that, if elected, the United States will remain firmly committed to defending Israel's interests under any and all circumstances. None of the candidates is likely to criticize Israel in any significant way or suggest that the United States ought to pursue a more evenhanded policy in the region. Any who do will probably fall by the wayside.
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What explains this behavior? Why is there so little disagreement among these presidential hopefuls regarding Israel, when there are profound disagreements among them on almost every other important issue facing the United States and when it is apparent that America's Middle East policy has gone badly awry? Why does Israel get a free pass from presidential candidates, when its own citizens are often deeply critical of its present policies and when these same presidential candidates are all too willing to criticize many of the things that other countries do? Why does Israel, and no other country in the world, receive such consistent deference from America's leading politicians?
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The real reason why American politicians are so deferential is the political power of the Israel lobby. The lobby is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively works to move U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. As we will describe in detail, it is not a single, unified movement with a central leadership, and it is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy that "controls" U.S. foreign policy. It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel's case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state. The various groups that make up the lobby do not agree on every issue, although they share the desire to promote a special relationship between the United States and Israel. Like the efforts of other ethnic lobbies and interest groups, the activities of the Israel lobby's various elements are legitimate forms of democratic political participation, and they are for the most part consistent with America's long tradition of interest group activity.

Because the Israel lobby has gradually become one of the most powerful interest groups in the United States, candidates for high office pay close attention to its wishes. The individuals and groups in the United States that make up the lobby care deeply about Israel, and they do not want American politicians to criticize it, even when criticism might be warranted and might even be in Israel's own interest. Instead, these groups want U.S. leaders to treat Israel as if it were the fifty-first state. Democrats and Republicans alike fear the lobby's clout. They all know that any politician who challenges its policies stands little chance of becoming president. ...
- posted by Editor @ 4:52 PM

Saturday, October 6, 2007 by CommonDreams.org | So Who’s Afraid of the Israel Lobby? | by Ray McGovern

Virtually everyone: Republican, Democrat-Conservative, Liberal. The fear factor is non-partisan, you might say, and palpable. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) brags that it is the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill, and has demonstrated that time and again-and not only on Capitol Hill.

Seldom has the Lobby’s power been as clearly demonstrated as in its ability to suppress the awful truth that on June 8, 1967, during the Six Day War:

* Israel deliberately attacked the intelligence collection ship USS Liberty, in full awareness it was a U.S. Navy ship, and did its best to sink it and leave no survivors;
* The Israelis would have succeeded had they not broken off the attack upon learning, from an intercepted message, that the commander of the U.S. 6th Fleet had launched carrier fighters to the scene; and
* By that time 34 of the Liberty’s crew had been killed and over 170 wounded.

Scores of intelligence analysts and senior officials have known this for years. That virtually all of them have kept a forty-year frightened silence is testament to the widespread fear of touching this live wire. Even more telling is the fact that the National Security Agency apparently has destroyed voice tapes and transcripts heard and seen by many intelligence analysts, material that shows beyond doubt that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.
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As for the larger picture, visiting Israel this past summer I was constantly told that Egypt forced Israel into war in June 1967. This does not square with the unguarded words of Menachem Begin in 1982, when he was Israel’s prime minister. Rather he admitted publicly:

“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify an expansion of its borders. Israel’s illegal 40-year control over and confiscation of land in the occupied territories and U.S. enabling support (particularly the one-sided support by the current U.S. administration) go a long way toward explaining why it is that 1.3 billion Muslims “hate us.” ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:56 PM

Israel’s Toy Soldiers | By Chris Hedges

10/01/07 "ICH" -- -- If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist “madrassa,” or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.

The Marva program, part summer camp part indoctrination, was launched in Israel in 1981. It allows participants, who must be Jewish and between the ages of 18 and 28, to fire weapons, live in military barracks in the Negev desert and saunter around in an Israeli military uniform saluting and taking long hikes with military packs. The Youth and Education Corps of the Israel Defense Forces run four 120-strong training sessions a year.
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“Upon arrival, the participants experience an abrupt change into army life: wearing uniforms, accepting army discipline, and learning the programs and lessons integral to the program,” the Let Israelis Show You Israel Web site reads. “The program includes military content such as: navigation, field training, weapons training, shooting ranges, marches and more, as well as educational content such as: Zionism, Jewish Identity, history and knowledge of the land of Israel. All of this is taught in Hebrew in an intensive eight weeks.”
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Terrorists arise in all cultures, all nations and all religions. We have produced more than our share. Ask the people of Vietnam or Iraq. The danger of a military program such as these is that it solidifies a mind-set of us and them. It romanticizes violence. It widens the divide that leads to conflict. It makes dialogue impossible. There are great Israeli institutions, from the newspaper Haaretz to the courageous Israeli human rights organization. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:50 PM

New revelations in attack on American spy ship | Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly '67 incident | By John Crewdson | Tribune senior correspondent | October 2, 2007
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Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.
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For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.

"They tried to lie their way out of it!" Lockwood shouts. "I don't believe that for a minute! You just don't shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!"

Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.

Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.

The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation. ....
- posted by Editor @ 8:46 PM

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 | The American Establishment Sends Israel a Warning

After 40 years the truth about the [Israeli] attempted sinking of the USS Liberty is finally becoming mainline news:

New revelations in attack on American spy ship

That this article is published, at this critical moment of time, when others are calling for another war to protect Israel´s hegemonic position in the Middle East is indeed meaningful.

That it was published in the Chicago Tribune, a mainline media outlet, is a sure sign, that something is changing in the American power-structure and even slowly but certainly in the media.

This might even be a clear warning to Israel, that the American military is no longer ready to fight Israel´s wars in the Middle East. ...
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... The attempted sinking of the USS Liberty was a first try of doing a 9/11, so America would get involved in the war against Egypt.
- posted by Editor @ 8:39 PM

Milton Viorst on ‘The Israel Lobby’ | Posted on Oct 4, 2007 | By Milton Viorst

About 30 or so years ago, when I first began to write of my concern that Israel was embarked on a course that would lead only to recurring wars, or perhaps worse, I received a letter from Abraham H. Foxman, then as now the voice of the Anti-Defamation League, admonishing me as a Jew not to wash our people’s dirty linen in public. I still have it in my files. His point, of course, was not whether the washing should be public or private; he did not offer an alternative laundry. His objective was—and remains—to squelch anyone who is critical of Israel’s policies.

In the ensuing years, Foxman and a legion of like-minded leaders, most but not all of them Jewish, have been remarkably successful in suppressing an open and frank debate on Israel’s course. In view of Israel’s impact on America’s place in the world, it is astonishing how little discussion its role has generated. As a practical matter, the subject has been taboo. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, professors of political science at the University of Chicago and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, respectively, have challenged this taboo in their new book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” Foxman, in an effort to discredit them, has written a rejoinder in his book “The Deadliest Lies: The Jewish Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.” ...
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Foxman does not quite accuse Mearsheimer and Walt—though other disapproving critics do—of being anti-Semitic. But he uses intimidating language nonetheless, pointing to a “level of quiet, subtle bigotry—an attitude that may not run to the actual hatred of Jews but that assumes that Jews are somehow different, less respectable, less honorable, more treacherous, more devious than other people. ... [I]t’s only natural that people who exhibit this kind of bias against Jews should look a little askance at the special relationship that exists between American Jews and the nation of Israel.”
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Yet, even taking money and organization into account, there remains something of a mystery about the influence that AIPAC and its allies wield. In contrast to AIPAC, the gun lobby is routinely called upon to defend itself. But AIPAC’s task, it seems, is easier, because non-Jews, no less than Jews, unquestioningly accept its marching orders. Why, when it comes to AIPAC, do so many Americans abandon the skepticism they apply to other interests within the political spectrum? Europe is much less accommodating to Israel. AIPAC, naturally, blames the difference on Europe’s anti-Semitism, though—apart from Europe’s Muslims, who start with political grievances against Israel—there is little evidence to support its theory. Mearsheimer and Walt credit AIPAC’s skillful manipulation of the system, but the search for an answer needs more.

Perhaps the answer has something to do with America’s being the most religious, the most Christian, the most church-going society in the Western world. Once upon a time, deeply held Christian faith could be taken as a measure of hostility to Jews; that certainly is the case no longer. If anything, American Christianity—led by but not exclusive to evangelicals—seems to take the biblical promise of a homeland for the Jews as a test of its beliefs and a commitment of its own. This commitment goes beyond guaranteeing Israel’s existence. It provides a body of sympathy for Israel’s hard line, and for the economic aid and weaponry that the United States dispatches to support it.

Unfortunately, the pro-peace segment of the American Jewish community does not have a parallel lobby. It has a few organizations, with dedicated adherents. Its members try to persuade the American Jewish community that reaching out to the Arab world, and particularly to the Palestinians, is better for Israel than perpetual war. AIPAC does its best to de-legitimize them, but they hang in stubbornly, though they are barely a whisper in the debate over Israel’s course. Despite the polls suggesting that many Jews agree with them, the influence of the peace groups is no threat to AIPAC’s pre-eminence. ...
- posted by Editor @ 4:41 PM

October 4, 2007 | An Unprecedented Campaign of Intimidation and Censorship | Dissenting at Your Own Risk | By CECILIE SURASKY

Last year, I agreed to speak to a Jewish youth group about my organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, and our opposition to Israel's occupation. My talk was to follow one from a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself "America's pro-Israel Lobby."

A week before, a shaken program leader said the AIPAC staffer had threatened to get the entire youth program's funding canceled if I was allowed in the door. The threat worked, and in disgust, they canceled the whole talk.

Pundits will surely argue for years about professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's explosive new book, The Israel Lobby, which blames poor U.S. policy in the Middle East on a loose network of individuals and pro-Israel advocacy groups.

But the book, and the response to it, opens up another controversy: the stifling of debate about unconditional U.S. support for Israeli policies.

Why is Israel's increasingly brutal 40-year occupation of Palestinian land regularly debated in the mainstream media abroad, including in Israel, but not here? And why is there an almost total lack of discussion among presidential candidates about the dollars that subsidize this occupation and the American diplomatic support that makes it possible?

In a society built on the free exchange of ideas, as Walt and Mearsheimer point out, one answer can be found by looking at the many self-appointed gatekeepers, such as Abraham Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League, or Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who use their Jewish identity as both a shield and cudgel. They work diligently to silence those who question ill-conceived policies of the Israeli and U.S. governments.

Non-Jewish critics, even former President Carter, are denounced as anti-Semites. Special ire is reserved for Jewish dissenters, who are branded as "self-hating" or "marginal," while Muslim and Arab-Americans are easily smeared and even criminalized with charges of supporting terrorism.

Stunned by the stifling of dissent, we decided to start a Web site, Muzzlewatch, to track the incidents. Just as we launched, Stanford Middle East Studies Professor Joel Beinin was disinvited from a speaking engagement at a high school with just 24 hours' notice. ...
- posted by Editor @ 9:13 PM

Thursday, October 4, 2007 | Mike Gravel has balls of steel, blames AIPAC for Iraq/Iran resolution

PBS Newsnight with Jim Lehrer interview with Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Mike Gravel, 17 min
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RAY SUAREZ (incredulous): You're saying that the national legislature of this country, rather than doing the will of the citizens of the United States, passed that Iran resolution, sanctioning the Republican Guard, because of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee?

MIKE GRAVEL: Wait a second. They'll be some information coming out about how this thing was drafted. So the answer is yes, the short answer.

If we touch Iran and they respond, you're talking about, in the minimum, a world depression, because the oil industry will just get shut down at the Straits of Hormuz. That's the minimum.

The worst that will happen will be a nuclear exchange, and I don't think we'll ever be able to contain once they start shooting bombs at each other nuclear devices. This is what's at stake with this resolution. And it's the height of immorality, irresponsibility, and the United States Senate, with the Democrats in charge, voted for the passage of this resolution. It doesn't get any worse than that, Ray.

- posted by Editor @ 8:37 PM

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 | Seymour Hersh: 'Jewish Money Controls Presidental Candidates' | When stuff like this is said openly you know that Zionist control over America is waning.

An excerpt from an October 2nd interview with Hersh:
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MIKE GRAVEL: This is fantasy land. We're talking about ending the war. My god, we're just starting a war right today. There was a vote in the Senate today. Joe Lieberman, who authored the Iraq resolution, has authored another resolution, and it is essentially a fig leaf to let George Bush go to war with Iran. And I want to congratulate Biden for voting against it, Dodd for voting against it, and I'm ashamed of you, Hillary, for voting for it.
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AMY GOODMAN: That was Hillary Clinton laughing. Fifteen seconds, Seymour Hersh. Your response?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York. Come on, let's not kid about it. A significant percentage of Jewish money, and many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential threat. And I think it's as simple as that. When you're from New York and from New York City, you take the view of -- right now, when you're running a campaign, you follow that line. And there's no other explanation for it, because she's smart enough to know the downside.

AMY GOODMAN: And Obama and Edwards?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I -- you know, it's shocking. It's really surprising and shocking, but there we are. That's American politics circa 2007. ...
- posted by Editor @ 12:45 PM